AZIZ SARTAJ (1929

AZIZ, SARTAJ (1929- ) Sartaj Aziz is from the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) He was educated at the Hailey College of Commerce, Lahore, and joined the Pakistan Military Accounts Service in 1952 He served in the Planning Commission for a number of years It was during his tenure on the Commission that the Second and Third Five-Year Plans were prepared He attended Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government in 1965 as a Mason Fellow He left Pakistan in 1970 to join the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and, while in Rome, played an important role in launching the International Fund for Agricultural Development He returned to Pakistan in 1980, at the invitation of President Zia ul-Haq, and was appointed minister of agriculture He served as finance minister in all Muslim League governments that were in office during the 1990s In August 1998, Aziz moved from the ministry of finance to the ministry of foreign affairs

He left active politics after the military came to power in October 1999, following the failure of an attempt to bring together various factions of the Muslim League In 2004, he was appointed vice chancellor of Beaconhouse National University, one of Pakistan’s first private universities